TSA apologzies to family of traumatized child

St. Louis, MO (KSDK) - A disabled three year old girl in a wheelchair is traumatized at Lambert Airport and now the TSA is responding and apologizing. The child was singled out during the TSA's screening process, the parents recorded it and since then they've had over 400,000 hits on YouTube.

It happened last month when the girl and her family were heading to Walt Disney World. The child was singled out for a pat down and wheelchair swab, her mom didn't like it, and recorded the whole thing.

"I don't want to go to Disney World," says three year old Lucy Forck through her tears at the security checkpoint.

Hundreds of thousands of people have viewed the video including the Transportation Security Administration.

They've since responded in a statement and it reads "TSA regrets inaccurate guidance was provided to this family during screening and offers its apology. We are committed to maintaining the security of the traveling public and strive to treat all passengers with dignity and respect. While no pat-down was performed, we will address specific concerns with our workforce."

The family was going on vacation and passing through Lambert on February 9th. At the security checkpoint is when 3 year old Lucy, who is in wheelchair, was separated from her family to get a proper screening, which at first was going to be a "pat down."

"They said she's in a wheelchair, we have to pat her down," says father Nathan Forck.

When lucy's parents caught up with their daughter, mom, Annie started filming on her phone, which at the time was a problem. The TSA officer calling the recording "illegal."

TSA went on to explain in a blog on their website: "Our officer did initially mention a pat-down. We admit this was confusing, and contributed to a stressful situation.Very quickly, a manager was able to step in and give guidance."

"Also, our officer told the passenger that it was illegal to film at the checkpoint. This is not the case."

Forck says after the incident he got a call.

"The TSA director for the St. Louis airport called me and apologized, he stated that Lucy should not have been threatened with a pat down," says Forck.

In the end Lucy's parents picked her up and walked her through the metal detector.

"Lucy got to meet Mickey Mouse on our last night there so, that was it she had a great time," says Forck.

TSA rolled out a new program in January to deal with situations like this. A TSA spokesperson tells me that more than 2,600 TSA officers have been trained as "passenger support specialists" and there was a "PSS" there at Lambert when this happened. That person in the helped clarify the situation to the parents.